Silly Little Girl

My kids have very particular wardrobe preferences.

Rex loves muscle shirts and shorts and wearing the same socks for three days straight, unless he is refusing to wear anything but his flip flops.

Leia LOVES wearing glittery clothes, long sleeves, tights and if it is a skirt (barely allows dresses even for church) it has to have shorts built in.

Belle only likes to wear sleeveless dresses, flat refuses to wear shirts or sweaters in cold weather or shorts underneath. And she's not good at keeping her business covered so she HAS to have more coverage.

Today before church I won the battle of the sweater and shorts. Go me.

As soon as we got seated and said the opening prayer at church she removed her sweater.

Fine, it is a bit warmer inside, so I put it in my bag.

Then I started paying attention to the announcements.

And then I hear at the edge of my consciousness,

"and my shorts, too."

WHAT!!?@?

I look over and she is holding her dress at her waist and removing her shorts.

Horror of all horrors!

Pull the dress down.

Pick up the shorts.

Try to put leg one in.

Cringe at the dress going back up to the waist.

Ignore the snickers from friends sitting in the row behind us.

Insert leg number two.

Mission accomplished.

Later in the meeting I pat myself on the back because she is hanging upside down off the chair with her shorts hanging out, instead of the pink and yellow Belle underwear.

I right her into her chair then and fifteen more times during the meeting.

Kids...what would I do for entertainment without them?

TV Boyfriends

I've been watching two of my favorite cancelled shows lately:

The O.C.

and

Star Trek: Enterprise

I am completely mesmerized by a main character in each show. The roles are quite different, as are the shows, but apparently there is a "look" that I am attracted to.

This is Ryan Attwood from The O.C.

He is a bad boy teenager from the hood who is adopted into his lawyer's privileged family when he is released from jail to find his family has abandoned him.

He just attracts trouble.
And me.

This is Commander Charles "Trip" Tucker III from Star Trek: Enterprise.

He is a good old boy from Florida who took to space with Starfleet in the first version of the starship Enterprise who always does what is right even if it is against a direct order.

He is a do-gooder with an attitude.

And a hottie.
(He beat out the captain-Scott Bakula, a longtime favorite-for my boyfriend in this show)

For some reason, I never noticed how much these two men looked like each other but it is kinda scary. It reminds me of the time in high school that I told my sweetie that I liked a bunch of what I thought were random songs and they turned out to all be by the same group (Chicago).

Hey, at least I can say I am consistent.

Model Behavior

Top ten way to know that your child is watching too much

“The Girls in the Pretty Dresses,”

also known as

Project Runway:

10. Puts clothing and accessories on her stuffed animals.

9. Walks into a room and instantly strikes a pose.

8. Has perfected the hand on hip pose.

7. Creates interesting dresses out of EVERYTHING.

6. Loves saying “You may now leave the runway.”

5. and “You are the winner of this challenge.”

4. Modifies the way she wears her own clothing.

3. Doles out double air kisses and a three-year-version of Auf Wiedersehen.

2. Tells her mother that she is "out."

1. Uses the aisle at church as a runway to model her dresses.

I have to admit that I totally LOVE it!

(both Belle's reactions and the show)

We've got crabs!

Last month I saw a sign in our WalMart announcing a

LEGO DAY

with a free project for kids.

We talked the kids into going shopping

(with the accompanying moans and groans)

and surprised them with the legos.

Belle was totally excited to have daddy build her model.

This is the expert at work.

And the little princess doing her best to get those tiny pieces to behave.

Here is a proud Belle with her result.

And the reluctant Rex who was more excited about the

power miner set that he was buying

with his own money.

And Dancing Princess Leia so proud of herself and the stickers she earned by finishing her

CRAB.

Little Gems

Rex is very worried about joining Cub Scouts when he turns 8. He was crying the other day because he was so distraught. This is what he said:

I don't want to be a Cub Scout because I won't be able to play with my Legos. (why?) I can't take them outside and so I won't be able to play with them when I am camping all the time.

This took a long time to calm him down, but now I think that he understands how Cub Scouts works.

****

Leia was being silly during lunch time saying "Me, too!" and "Me, three!" Then she had an epiphany:

Mommy! Me, too! rhymes with two (showing two fingers).

And Me, three! rhymes with three, like how many Belle (pointing at her sister) is.

AND! Me, five! rhymes with five, like me.

Then Belle says, I know what number Rex is. He is seven.

****

And Rex said something else yesterday that I can't remember now, but maybe my favorite will read this and give me a reminder.

Oh, the joy!

I just got a big drink of water
straight from the tap!!!

right after I sprayed Pam
(generic, of course)

in my bread pans

while my kids opened up two boxes

delivered right to my door by UPS.

Land of Milk and Honey, Baby!

The Land of Milk and Honey

I just looked at the expiration date on my milk.

It is still good until NEXT FRIDAY!!!

(Not that it will last that long)

And I bought it on Monday.

(ok, so my in-laws bought it on Tuesday)

Still quite impressive.

I love not having to go buy milk every other day.

Definately the land of (long-lasting) milk and honey (which I imported back from Brazil with me).

Teaching is in their genes

Yesterday we didn't do Rex's homework right after school. Then he was playing SO well with his sisters that I didn't want to interrupt (this being the afternoon that grandma left, so a lot of drama was possible).

So this morning he did his homework while I loaded the dishwasher and Leia ate her breakfast.

Leia was showing a little interest when she found out it was math (*proud thoughts*) so Rex explained it to her and she ended up doing the homework with him.

He was explaining that the little squares were ones and the long bars were tens...

It was so cute.

What a knob!

Everyone with kids has to have the obligatory mykidlockedthemselvesinaroom moments.

We had one tonight.

Belle was SO tired that it was all crying and hitting and whining so I put her into her room with a towel in her door to avoid the escape-artist antics that she is so well known for.

Eventually the noise stopped and she was obviously asleep.

I went to open the door to give her free reign when she wakes up in the night, only to find that the door was locked from the inside. I have run into this before when she was inside and awake, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, and didn't want to have that happen again.

So I decided to unscrew the knob and turn it around.

Funny thing. Even with one knob off, the door is still locked - from the inside.

Then I had the bright idea of taking out the other half of the door knob.

I poked it partway out and just before it was ready to fall to the floor, I realized that the last time I put a towel in her door, Belle fell asleep right in front of it.

I was holding this locked doorknob piece with two fingers, one from each hand, through the doorknob hole deciding which way to swing the thing to cause the least amount of damage to my baby if she was, in fact, in front of the door.

Then the knob slipped.

Without any strategic swinging of the knob.

Fortunately, it clunked straight on to the floor.

And the door was still shut.And locked.

I tried using the screwdriver to work the thing open, but having minimal experience with the mechanical workings of doorknobs, I didn't know that wouldn't work.

SO, I pulled the doorknob off my door and, with it in the unlocked position, I opened the door.

Now, this may be where you think the story ends, but don't navigate away to another blog just quite yet.

Yes, I am long-winded. I know. Deal.

So I decide to reverse the doorknob, like I have been planning since we decided which room was hers. Really quick.

Did I mention that none of our rooms have overhead lights and that we only have four lamps, all of which are outside of Belle's room?

Twenty minutes later - I KID YOU NOT - I finally had that little bugger screwed onto the door.

Thanks to a little help from the light of my cell phone dangling from between my teeth.

And I still had to put MY doorknob back together. That took much less time, actually being able to SEE what I was doing.

What a sad story.

Now it is over.

Oh, and Belle was actually in her bed and stayed asleep through the whole ordeal.

Home, Sweet, Home

So here is our new house. The white curtains in the HUGE window over the front door are now maroon to match the shutters.

This is the view I have while standing at the sink in the kitchen.

My wheels. All of them.

I have ridden the girls up to the bus stop twice (70 lbs of girly-girls) just to coast down with Belle in the back. Soon I'll get up the courage to go on a real bikeride.

Another angle on our house.

Looking out my bedroom window.

Looking down the street. Our house is on the left, just out of the picture.

The view from the hammock in the backyard.

More corn and houses in our backyard. Too bad its feed corn, or I'd have eaten a few ears already.

We have been frantically unpacking and organizing (and throwing away). A few days ago we had BOTH cars parked in the garage. I'm pretty sure that both of them are back out tonight. I have installed curtain rods on all the windows, except for the family room, and am working on using the curtains we already have and deciding what else we need to get our windows dressed.

Oh, and did I mention that a spa came with the house? Yes, we have a recreational body of water in our backyard. No drownings yet, but some of our water toys have fallen into the cracks between the deck and the spa. Daddy? Can you climb through the mulch and spiders and dirt to ge my squishy ball so I can throw it at you again? I promise I won't miss this time.

It has been fun finding all my tools, which have been in storage for over two years, but I am sad because my favorite one (the router), along with all its accessories id nowhere to be found. Easy to steal if you are an unethical moving man. I just hope that I am able to get new stuff for the price that we insured it all for. We'll see.

Commander in Chief

I am sending my kids to school on Tuesday. We need to support the (if not our) president and show our kids to respect the government. I'm pretty sure that the five or ten minutes that the kids will pay atteniton to will not go very far in the brainwashing that some parents seem to be fearing.